A fun Friends of Oklawaha Greenway fundraiser: How do you say Oklawaha?
HENDERSONVILLE - How do you pronounce Oklawaha? Is it with the long-sounding O at the beginning like in Oklahoma or the short-sounding O, like in the word octopus?
The Friends of Oklawaha Greenway have organized a new fundraiser for the entire month of March at Oklawaha Brewing and it's based on the pronunciation of Oklawaha. There will be two jars, one for the long-sounding O and one for the short-sounding O, located at the bar at Oklawaha Brewing where people can cast their votes by putting in coins.
The fundraising idea is the brainchild of Friends of Oklawaha Greenway volunteer Katie Breckheimer. She and some friends wrote a song four years ago, and her and her fellow volunteers sang the song for a YouTube post that can be found at this link: https://www.friendsofoklawaha.org/1videoSong.php.
"I have issued a challenge to see what pronunciation of the name is preferred. Some friends and I wrote a song a while back, rewriting the words to the Broadway musical Oklahoma!, which I thought would help people with pronouncing the word," Breckheimer said. "But at the time, I didn't realize there was another pronunciation camp, that being the short O sound. With this fundraising month, the Friends of Oklawaha Greenway thought it would be fun to issue a challenge."
Breckheimer said that after all the votes have been cast for the month of March, the winning pronunciation will be announced on April Fool's Day (April 1).
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“It’s a you-say-potato, I-say-potatto kind of thing,” Breckheimer said. “Our Friends group has partnered with the Oklawaha Brewing Company for the entire month of March, so you have four weeks to vote. Through the generosity of owner/brewer Joe Dinan, the Brewery is giving us a portion of their draft pint sales.”
Dinan said he gets people in the brewery all the time asking how to pronounce Oklawaha.
“We’ve always told them it’s a Native American word meaning slow moving muddy water, but how to say it has two different camps. The Oklawaha waterway, otherwise known as Mud Creek, is Henderson County’s main tributary to the French Broad River. We applaud the Friends of the Oklawaha Greenway for advocating for a bigger and better trail alongside it. The Oklawaha Greenway is a great little 3.5-mile paved trail right down the street from the Brewery.”
On the other side of the Oklawaha pronunciation challenge, is saying it with a short O sound, like the word octopus.
"The backstory on this preference is that when developers started building out the town of Hendersonville, some came from places near the Ocklawaha River. The 74-mile-long Ocklawaha flows north from central Florida until it joins the St. Johns River near Palatka," Breckheimer said. "The developers brought the river’s name with them, naming several things and pronouncing it with a short O sound."
Old-time radio celebrity Frank FitzSimons popularized the name of the creek, using its long O sound. His program, From the Banks of the Oklawaha, recounted stories from the area. FitzSimons published three books by the same name, From the Banks of the Oklawaha, which can be found at the Henderson County Library.
“Voting by placing coins in jars probably won’t solve the long-running debate over how to say our name, but it’s a fun conversation to have over a beer,” said Suzanne Hale, chair of the Friends of the Greenway group. “Show us how you like to say it, and raise a pint for us. The money collected from the voting will help our new birding trail and native plant garden.”
Other events Friends of Oklawaha Greenway has planned at Oklawaha Brewing are a kickoff event on March 3, an Everything Greenway Day on March 17 and a cleanup event on March 25. To find out more, go to friendsofoklawaha.org or oklawahabrewing.com.
Dean Hensley is the news editor for the Hendersonville Times-News. Email him with tips, questions and comments at DHensley@localiq.com. Please help support this kind of local journalism with a subscription to the Hendersonville Times-News.
This article originally appeared on Hendersonville Times-News: A fun Friends of Oklawaha Greenway fundraiser: How do you say Oklawaha?
